


Case Study + Normalcy (The Twice Aborted Remix)

by thepurpleswitch (andchimeras)



Category: Sports Night
Genre: Community: remix_redux, F/M, Gen, Infidelity, M/M, Mash-up, Multi, Remix, written in 2004
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-11
Updated: 2011-04-11
Packaged: 2017-10-17 23:15:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,385
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/182371
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/andchimeras/pseuds/thepurpleswitch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"he knew this guy who was so good, wrong, guilty, exciting, secret." Remix Redux II: Electric Boogaloo mash-up of Oro's "Case Study" and "Normalcy."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Case Study + Normalcy (The Twice Aborted Remix)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Oro](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=Oro).



Dan's met Jeremy before--they've known each other for years. It's so easy for them to talk to each other, they know each other's pattern so immediately. No one can believe they met for the first time the day Jeremy fell into the conference room and made coffee come out of Casey's nose by apologising to the cable over which he tripped.

No one believes it, but they have to believe it, because it's the truth. Has to be the truth, because if it's not the truth, then Dan did meet Jeremy for the first time at a Cowboys home game in the middle of a losing streak and Dan did seduce him in the men's room and Jeremy did apologise for being a bad kisser. He did apologise six times.

If they've met before.

Jeremy sees Dan like kind of a brotherly figure, people say to each other, and Dan considers Jeremy his brother too. Older or younger, no one's sure, because Dan is irresponsible and immature where Jeremy is really not, but Dan has that whole missing-younger-sibling issue. No one's sure.

It's the only explanation, right, for the familiarity; two weeks after meeting him for the first time, Dan gives Jeremy a noogie and says Jerome is looking for the camera ignition keys.

Everybody agrees that Jeremy should know better. And since it's the kind of thing brothers do to each other anyway, nobody says anything.

When Dan dresses like Jeremy, nobody notices. But then Natalie does, and she tells him to stop being mean.

"What?" Dan says. "I like sweaters in October."

"You're making fun of his fashion sense." Natalie shakes her head so her hair flutters over her cheeks and Dan watches, a little entranced. "And relative lack thereof. Quit it. It's mean."

She punches him in the chest and he snaps to attention. "I'll have you know I've been dressing like this for years. Jeremy just made it cool again."

Natalie smiles prettily, pointily and looks up at him. "Maybe Jeremy got it from you."

Dan smiles back, meeting Natalie's coyness at every turn. "Maybe."

It was four months of absolute insanity if they've met before and it was incredibly humid that spring and Jeremy did give Dan heat rash fucking him three times a day. Casey didn't ask about the walking funny because he didn't want to know and Jeremy did apologise six times. Jeremy was not sorry enough to let Dan fuck him.

Jeremy did take a mediocre job at Newsweek and he did say, "It's not you, it's me," and Dan didn't say, "That's a fucking lie and we both know it," or, "I love you."

If they've met before, Dan got drunk with Dana on a Saturday night ad let her seduce him in the foyer of her apartment building. He did let Casey think it was a joke when he said, "And she looks damn fine naked, too."

Dan was surprised the first time Jeremy came to him for advice about Natalie. Because, if they've met before, it's the worst kind of cruelty and Dan has never, of all the tings he has thought about Jeremy, considered him cruel. If they haven't met before, Dan is surprised because why on earth would Jeremy think Dan knows how to--be--that guy.

Because he isn't. Gershwin is well and good but it doesn't get Dan laid and the New York Renaissance is really all about--

It's all about knowing the cool places and hot scenes and overlaying it with nostalgia and the kind of superiority that lets Dan think he's still won the last fight they never had, even if he's helping Jeremy win this incandescent girl.

 

* * *

 

Jeremy met Dan on September thirteenth while they both tried to stem Casey's reflexive nosebleed. Jeremy said, "Tilt your head forward," and Dan said, "Tilt your head back," and Dana said, "For God's sake, give him some air!"

Natalie slowly unbuttons Jeremy's shirt and asks him how he came to be Dan's boy.

Jeremy blushes and Natalie thinks it's so cute she could eat him right up.

"You're my boy now," she says as she shrugs his shirt off her shoulders.

"Absolutely," he says and he touches her abdomen reverently, forgetting to answer the question.

If they've never met before, Jeremy is surprised by the way Dan will pat his back or cup his shoulder. So familiar--not like Jeremy's felt it before, but like Dan's known him for longer that three months. Since it's only been three months, he surprised when he starts touching Dan back.

He's ready, or, not ready, but at least, by how easy it is to hug Dan when Dan lurches at him half-drunkenly. He's not surprised and this has nothing to do with touching, by how easy it is to apply boxing metaphors to Dan.

Dan bobs and weaves, he's slow to roll back up on his feet; he springs back when he's thrown down but he starts noticing the impact in the next round. Jeremy finds it easy familiar in that strange Dan way--to turn his face when Dan turns his, and to meet expectation with his lips.

It's easy. So easy he wonders, sometimes, sometimes when he's not thinking about whether people notice or if he was gay in a past life or what Natalie would think--he wonders at the fact that it took almost losing the show and Natalie seriously losing her mind (last days of a war, right) to get Dan to kiss him. Get Jeremy to kiss him back.

The pattern is easy and quick and Jeremy likes how easy it is, likes that he doesn't have to second-guess himself or Dan's motives. They know each other so well. Better every day they go home together, every hour, every minutes Jeremy spends inside Dan.

The valley of Dan's thighs is hot, almost unbearably so, and smells like dry grass, where Natalie is refreshing, cool, like a temperate rain forest; open and free, like a national park. Dan is high plains in the west and he is carefully parcelled in to sections, fenced off with barbed wire and scrap wood.

Jeremy is surprised, finally, when he wants Natalie back. He's surprised when he goes to her without thinking about it. It's Christmas and she said yes and he makes love to her in her wide white bed.

He doesn't even think--how could he not? He's surprised that he didn't think of Dan.

Why would he, though? They've never made any promises--Jeremy gags on the thought. Shouldn't need promises. Should just know. It's him, and it's Dan and they know these things.

Must just know, then, that's all right and that Dan will be okay. Because Dan is okay now.

Dan says, "I don't want my spare key back," and opens his shirt and his bedroom door. Jeremy's never cheated on anybody in his life. Not in any way. Not even kissing. Not even half-flirtatious conversations wherein he neglects to mention he's taken.

He doesn't know what to say when he tells Dan this and Dan says, "I don't care."

It was sex and now it's fucking and Jeremy wonders if Dan wants him at all, or just to be fucked. Jeremy wonders if any cock would do. If Dan's always been like this, whatever this is, and if so, why it has to be Jeremy's cock.

Jeremy knows better than to ask.

He thinks he ought to know better than to do this at all.

Jeremy, who'd rather--he doesn't know how honest this assertion is, but he means it when he makes it--be with Natalie or even alone every minute he's doing this, this horrible thing (thought he was better than his father). Jeremy knows not to ask.

He knows these things.

And Natalie is happy and people say things have finally gotten back to normal. Casey snipes at Dana and Dan grins at Jeremy over the conference room table and it's a real smile, it's not bitter or sly or--not even knowing. It's not jealous (Natalie's moved across the table permanently and her fingers are hooked over the back of Jeremy's collar).

It's just Dan. Just like the first time they met.

Like they don't know each other at all.

 

End.


End file.
